The purpose of this guide is to explain how to move a Wordpress blog from one hosting account to another. Maybe you found cheaper website hosting? Maybe it's just time to change! For whatever reason, it is useful to have an all-inclusive guide to help you with migrating your Wordpress blog!
To begin with, you will need a basic understanding of how Wordpress interacts with it's hosting environment, and this is easier than it sounds! The Wordpress application is a well-written script that interacts with a MySQL Database to store and retrieve it's content. The script controls how Wordpress displays content, and the CSS (This is the "template" or theme that you have chosen) controls how it is formatted (the "visual appeal). Wordpress also "knows where it lives" (meaning, it knows it's own URL based on where it was installed) so if needed, you can also change Wordpress's URL if you want to change it's website address.
So let's get started!
How to Move a Wordpress Blog between hosting accounts or servers:
Steps:
(Note: this outlines the basic steps. Details for each step where available will be provided below)
1. Backup Current Database (Contact your current hosting provider). This should be a file ending in .sql extension. (specific steps may need to be provided by your current hosting provider)
2. Backup ALL files, (including the database .sql file) to an empty folder somewhere on your computer. (This is usually done via FTP so your current hosting provider may need to provide specific steps)
3. Create an Empty Database
4. Upload ALL files to the new hosting account.
5. Restore the .sql backup INTO the empty database
6. Modify wp-config.php to connect TO the new (restored) database.
7. Point the domain to the new hosting account
